Debate I: Cutting an Interpretive Piece
The following is a “cut” from the novel, The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. This cutting includes an introduction and has been retyped in dialogue format. This selection was performed in Dramatic Interpretation and earned the student a bid to the NFL
National Speech and Debate
Tournament in Philadelphia, PA, in 2005.
***************This cutting may NOT be utilized by a student for competition. **************
My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.
In newspaper photos of missing girls from the seventies, most looked like me: white girls with mousy brown
hair. This was before kids of all races and genders started appearing on milk cartons or in the daily mail. It was
still back when people believed things like that didn’t happen.
Intro:
So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all
what she expected, even as she is watching life on earth continue without her.
The Lovely Bones
By Alice Sebold
My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to
him once about fertilizer. My murderer believed in old-fashioned things like eggshells and coffee grounds,
which he said his own mother had used. My father came home smiling, making jokes about how the man’s
garden might be beautiful but it would stink to high heaven once the heat wave hit.
But on December 6, 1973, it was snowing, and I took a shortcut through the cornfield back from junior high. It
was dark out because the days were shorter in the winter, and I remember how the broken cornstalks made
my walk more difficult. The snow was falling lightly, like a flurry of small hands, and I was breathing through
my nose until it was running so much that I had to open my mouth. Six feet from where Mr. Harvey stood, I
stuck my tongue out to taste a snowflake.
Mr. Harvey: Don’t let me startle you.
Of course, in a cornfield, in the dark, I was startled. After I was dead I thought about how there had been the
light scent of cologne in the air but that I had not been paying attention, or thought it was coming from one of
the houses up ahead.
Susie: Mr. Harvey?
Mr. Harvey: You’re the older Salmon girl, right?
Susie: Yes.
Mr. Harvey: How are your folks?
Although the eldest in my family and good at acing a science quiz, I had never felt comfortable with adults.
Susie: Fine.
I was cold, but the natural authority of his age, and the added fact that he was a neighbor and had talked to
my father about fertilizer, rooted me to the spot.
Mr. Harvey: I’ve built something back here. Would you like to see?
Susie: I’m sort of cold, Mr. Harvey and my mom likes me home before dark.
Mr. Harvey: It’s after dark, Susie.
I wish now that I had known this was weird. I had never told him my name. I guess I thought my father had
told him. But, as it turned out, my father had not mentioned us to Mr. Harvey.
Mr. Harvey: I’ve made a little hiding place.
Susie: I don’t see anything.
Mr. Harvey: You should be more observant, Susie.
I felt like observing my way out of there, but I didn’t. Why didn’t I?
Mr. Harvey: Come and see.
It was awkward to get into, that much he admitted once we were both inside the hole. It was obvious that
escape wasn’t a concept I had any real experience with. Mr. Harvey asked me if I would like a refreshment. I
said I had to go home.
Mr. Harvey: Be polite and have a Coke. I’m sure that the other kids would.
Susie: What other kids?
Mr. Harvey: I built this for the kids in the neighborhood. I thought it could be some sort of clubhouse.
I don’t think I believed this even then. I thought he was lying. I imagined he was lonely. I felt sorry for him.
Mr. Harvey: Do you have a boyfriend?
Susie: No, Mr. Harvey.
I swallowed the rest of my Coke, which was a lot.
Susie: This is a cool place Mr. Harvey, but I have to go.
He stood up and did his hunchback number by the six dug-in steps that led to the world.
Mr. Harvey: I don’t know why you think you’re leaving.
I talked so that I would not have to take in this knowledge: Mr. Harvey was no character. He made me feel
skeevy and icky now that he was blocking the door.
Susie: Mr. Harvey, I really have to go home.
Mr. Harvey: Take off your clothes.
Susie: What?
Mr. Harvey: Take your clothes off.
Susie: Mr. Harvey, please let me leave.
Mr. Harvey: You aren’t leaving, Susie. You’re mine now.
I fought hard. I fought as hard as I could not to let Mr. Harvey hurt me, but my hard-as-I-could was not hard
enough, not even close.
I thought of my mother.
My mother would be checking the dial of the clock on her oven.
“Susie! Susie!” I heard my mother calling. “Dinner is ready.”
He had ripped away the veil of my innocence. That was all. I was still breathing. I heard his heart. I smelled his
breath. I knew he was going to kill me. I did not realize then that I was an animal already dying.
I could not move. I could not get up.
Mr Harvey: Tell me you love me.
Susie: (weakly) I love you.
The end came anyway.
Mr. Harvey took my remains to a sinkhole eight miles from our neighborhood. On the way back to the wagon
he put his hands in his pockets. There was my silver charm bracelet. He couldn’t remember taking it off my
wrist. Had no memory of thrusting it into the pocket of his clean pants. He walked into a hole that would soon
be a false pond, and he stood there and fingered the charms one last time. He liked the Pennsylvania keystone,
which my father had had engraved with my initials and he pulled it off and placed it in his pocket. He threw
the bracelet, with its remaining charms, into the soon to be man- made lake.
It would be some time before I realized what you’ve undoubtedly already assumed, that I wasn’t the first girl
he’d killed. He knew to remove my body from the field. He knew to watch the weather and to kill during an arc
of light-to-heavy precipitation because that would rob the police of evidence. As he scoured his body in the
hot water, he felt a calm flood him. He kept the lights out in the bathroom and he felt the warm water wash
me away.
PAUSE
Years later, in a small house a few miles away was a man who held my muddy- crusted charm bracelet out to
his wife.
Man: Look what I found at the old industrial park. A construction guy said they were bulldozing the whole lot.
They’re afraid of more sinkholes. His wife poured him some water from the sink as he fingered the tiny bike
and the ballet shoe, the flower basket and the thimble. He held out the muddy bracelet as she set down his
glass.
Woman: This little girl’s grown up by now.
I smiled. Almost.
Not quite.
***************This cutting may NOT be utilized by a student for competition. **************
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